On His Trail

From the Central station, where I got off coming from Rome, the university of Naples Federico II is a short distance away and I decide to go on foot. As I walk I revisit what I have read on the train about Renato’s scientific work. Carlo Sbordone, who founded a school of mathematical analysis in Naples and has continued and renewed the tradition of classical research undertaken by Caccioppoli, clearly explains that it is impossible in a short space to give a complete idea of his work, which involved the principal sectors of mathematical analysis. “Caccioppoli’s primary interests,” he states, “were directed at functional analysis and the theory of functions of a real variable, with particular regard to integration and set functions, to the quadrature of surfaces, and to linear approximation.”